Tasktop Technologies Reports 2012 Business [Professional Services Close - Up]

Tasktop Technologies saw its business grow by 250 percent during 2012 as the coming of age of Agile and developer-centric collaboration tools drove the need for integrated and best-of-breed Application Lifecycle Management stacks.

In a release dated Jan. 9, the Company said that in 2012, Tasktop strengthened its position in ALM integration with new OEM deals with key ALM vendors, including IBM, HP and CA. It also extended its ecosystem of integrations to encompass the latest cloud-based offerings, including Microsoft TFS, the Oracle Developer Cloud Service and Atlassian OnDemand.

As a result, the company grew rapidly throughout the year, nearly doubling in size, opening a new headquarters in Vancouver, a new office in Austin, and adding Dave West to its leadership team.

"At the outset of 2012, many were expecting consolidation in the ALM market, due to the proliferation of Agile and ALM tools we saw the year prior," said Mik Kersten, CEO of Tasktop and creator of the open source Eclipse Mylyn project. "Instead, we saw the reverse, with both established players and incumbents launching new offerings, often differentiated by being tailored to a particular stage of the lifecycle. Stakeholder-specific tools have become a fundamental and beneficial part of the modern ALM stack. But they cannot deliver benefits with an infrastructure that supports cross- tool collaboration and visibility. Tasktop's growth in 2012 is a result of our multi-year investment in establishing the open-source platform, partnerships and customer base needed to create the first collaborative infrastructure for connecting the increasingly heterogeneous world of software delivery."

Highlights for Tasktop in 2012 include: Business Growth during 2012, Tasktop continued its strong, organic growth with sales bookings increasing 250 percent and the company's staff growing to more than 50. The company expanded its North American footprint with a new office in Austin, Texas and an expanded office in Vancouver, B.C., where the company is headquartered and won several awards, including the Forty Under 40 for Tasktop co-founder Kersten and Best Companies to Work in British Columbia.

In addition, Tasktop was recognized for its industry contributions, being named a finalist for a World Technology Award in the IT Software category. Eclipse Mylyn, the open source project Tasktop continues to lead, also saw sharp growth and is now downloaded more than 2 million times per month.

The company also signed OEM deals with IBM, CA and HP.

Other announcements included Tasktop Sync support for Microsoft Team Foundation Server and ThoughtWorks Studios Mingle.

Kersten continues to serve as a Sustaining Member Representative on the Eclipse Foundation Board of Directors. He also serves on the Steering Committee of the Open Standards for Lifecycle Collaboration project, and leads Tasktop's involvement with the World Wide Web Consortium, to support bringing OSLC protocols for Linked Data to the W3C. During the year Tasktop also hired Dave West as chief product officer.

Other highlights included a Tasktop/Oracle joint presentation at JavaOne and Kersten's keynote at EclipseCon 2012 on the Impact of Open Source Practices on Enterprise and Agile ALM.

"The past year was a breakout one for Tasktop as many organizations have accepted the inherent heterogeneity in their development processes and tool stacks, and have come to realize that connecting these workflows and tools are critical to on-time and high-quality software delivery," said Neelan Choksi, president and COO for Tasktop. "There are many factors pushing a connected application development organization to the forefront in 2013, including new challenges with regulations, distance working, decentralized IT and developer populism. Tasktop is excited to work with our customers and partners to tackle these new problems, and create new opportunities to advance the art of building and deploying software."

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